


Waiting, Watching, Wanting

by Orianne (morganya)



Category: Whose Line Is It Anyway? RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-03-06
Updated: 2003-03-06
Packaged: 2017-11-02 22:09:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/373876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganya/pseuds/Orianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Endings and beginnings. Or, it's just like the first one, only different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting, Watching, Wanting

Colin was glad to be out of his chair. He'd spent the past thirty-six hours trying to get from Toronto to L.A. If he was standing up, he felt a thin buzz of burned-out energy, but if he sat down, all he could think about was shutting his eyes and falling asleep in his water glass, nose-first.

The game was Questions Only. Colin crossed his arms, one ear turned towards Drew. Ryan had his head tilted back in an exaggerated 'I'm paying attention' pose. Across the stage, Wayne was cocking his head, smiling at his own private joke. Greg, frowning at his shirt cuffs, smoothed down his tie.

Drew said, "And the scene is, you're at a wedding when something --- *something* --- goes horribly wrong. Colin and Greg, you start. Take it away. Questions Only."

Colin stepped forward. After a minute, with a faint shrug and a smile, Greg joined him.

"Are you with the bride or the groom?" Colin said.

"Don't you know?" Greg spread his hands in a gesture of amazement.

"Why should I know?"

"Well, aren't you…the bride's mother?"

Colin heard the audience's laughter, faintly; he adjusted his posture to milk the laugh, almost unconsciously. He looked down his nose at Greg. Greg shrugged again, a 'what can you do' gesture. "Do I look like a woman?"

"Why else are you wearing a skirt?"

"Haven't you even heard of a kilt?"

"Where am I sitting?" Greg said.

"Why should I tell you?"

Greg leaned forward, putting his hand on Colin's quickly. "What happened to us?"

Colin pulled his hand away, looked into the distance and tried to assume his 'male soap opera star' expression. "Isn't that something you should ask…her?"

"Don't you know…" Greg paused for half a beat. "She's gone?"

"What happened?"

Greg's mouth quirked upward. "I don't know." He turned smartly and walked back to his place. Wayne took his place, saying, "Did you see the naked guy out in the limo?"

Colin automatically responded, but his eyes went to Greg, who was once again fiddling with his clothes. Greg didn't look up.

*****

When the taping was over Colin just headed back to his dressing room and locked the door, not feeling up to socializing and not ready to head back to his hotel. He changed into his street clothes, slouched down onto the couch and reached for his cell phone.

Debra answered the phone. "Hello?"

"Hi," Colin said. He wondered what he should call her. "It's me."

"Oh, hi." There was a pause on the end of the line; he knew she was wondering the same thing he was. "How are you?"

"I'm fine. I just wanted to talk to Luke for a minute."

She let out a soft sigh. "He's gone over to his friend's house for the night. Do you want the number? He'll be sorry he missed you."

"It's okay. I'll just try again tomorrow. Is everything, you know, going…" He picked at a spot on the couch.

"Yeah, it's going fine, it's going well. Are you in LA?"

"Yeah." Colin struggled to think of something to say. Ever since they'd signed the papers, talking to Deb had the feeling of talking to a friend he'd lost touch with. "The taping just ended."

"Oh. Well, that's good, now you can go out and have some fun. Or get some sleep."

"Sleep's probably better."

"Probably." She laughed, a quick nervous sound. "Colin?"

"Yeah?"

"You doing okay? I mean, really?"

He wondered what to say. "Yeah. Really. I'm fine."

"Okay." She paused. "I'll tell Luke to hang over the phone tomorrow."

"Sure. Nice to talk to you."

"You too. Take care of yourself out there."

"Sure. Bye." He put the phone away and slouched even deeper into the couch. "Dammit."

He thought about driving back to the hotel but the thought of facing the California sunshine made him feel sick. The dressing room seemed self-contained, removed; the couch was soft. He shut his eyes, not even bothering to get up to turn off the light.

He woke up and automatically reached to turn off the bedside lamp, but there was nothing there. He jerked up, head spinning, and tried to remember where he was.

*Dressing room. I'm in the dressing room.* He stood up stiffly, his back twinging a little. He was too old to sleep on the couch. He knew without even looking at his watch that it was late; he couldn't hear anyone outside.

*God, I'm such a baby.* He went to unlock the door and realized that his ears had tricked him; there was a faint murmuring sound down the hallway, scraps of slurred voice floating through.

*This is how horror movies start.* The hallway lights were still on; they buzzed over his head. All the doors were shut, plain beige walls stretching on forever. His footsteps sounded loud as he walked towards the murmuring. It was coming from Greg's dressing room.

It was music, he realized as he got closer, probably Tom Waits. A half-ruined voice sang behind Greg's closed door. "Hang down your head for sorrow, hang down your head for me."

Colin knocked on the door. "Greg? Hello?"

"Hush, my love was so true, hush, my love a train now, well, it takes me away from you."

Colin opened the door. Greg sprawled on the couch, one foot up, staring at the tiny stereo on the table. The song ended; Greg reached out and hit a button, and the same song started again. He didn't look up. "Hush a wild violet, hush a band of gold, hush, you're in a story that I heard somebody told."

"Greg?" Colin said.

"Christ!" Greg flinched, slapping a hand down to turn off the music. He looked up and sighed. "Jesus. Hey, Col. Don't *ever* fucking do that again, 'kay?"

"Yeah. Sorry about that. I just wondered where the music was coming from. Guess you didn't hear me knocking."

"You guess correctly." Greg lit a cigarette. "Why are you still here? It's almost ten."

"Jet lag. I fell asleep on the couch. Um…"

Greg shrugged. "If you're going to ask me why I'm still here, I don't have an answer. Maybe I just wanted to spend some quality time with the night janitor. You really fell asleep in the dressing room?"

"Yeah."

"I think I've conquered the need for sleep. I'm running on coffee and cigarettes right now. Did you ever hear that old Tonight Show story? Rex Harrison or…somebody. Can't remember his name right now. He was on the show once and never got invited back because he fell asleep while Carson was interviewing him." Greg laughed. "Doesn't say much for his people skills, does it? Your guests are falling asleep on you. I think they had a warning sign up in the green room for a while. 'Caution: exposure to this host may cause drowsiness.'"

Colin smiled, wondering what the hell was going on. Greg was always voluble, but now he sounded like someone in solitary confinement, talking to remember what the sound of his voice was like. "You all right?"

Greg crushed out his cigarette and gave him a small smile. "I guess. I'm just bored, I think."

"Oh. You going to head home soon?"

"No," Greg said. "I'm not." He lit another cigarette. "I hear so much about the nightlife in this town anyway; figured I'd start pretending I'm not ancient and go out and experience it. Whatever that means."

"Well, I'm going to head out," Colin said. "You want to come? Grab some dinner?" He wasn't exactly sure why he was asking; he hadn't been very good company lately, but he also didn't really want to be alone.

"Couple of beers, maybe?"

"Not your American beer."

"Ah. The subtle jab at our booze. I'm sorry, Colin, but you can't always have pure ethyl alcohol in a glass."

"Well, I don't see why not."

"I think it has something to do with the terrorists winning and making the baby Jesus cry." Greg smiled and put out his cigarette. "You know where you want to go?"

"You know this town better than I do."

"Barely." Greg scowled, counting off on his fingers in what Colin guessed was an attempt to decide. "I don't know. Let's just go to Fatburger. It's probably the only place open, anyway."

"Healthy."

"Very." Greg slipped the Waits CD into his jacket pocket. "The one on Wilshire. You want to follow me there?"

"Sure."

They had parked near each other in the lot. Colin started up the rental car, waiting for Greg to pull out. He absent-mindedly hit the radio.

Greg's car didn't pull out. Colin frowned, leaning forward. He could see Greg's hands flying through the air, landing on the dashboard with such force that he knew it had to hurt. Colin's radio was still playing; from his vantage point it looked like Greg was having a fit to the tune of "No Such Thing."

Colin turned off the car and got out, wincing at the sudden influx of heavy, smog-laden air. He walked over to Greg, who had stopped pounding the dashboard and had slumped over the steering wheel.

Colin wondered if he should say something or knock on the window. Before he could decide Greg unlocked the car door. Colin skittered out of the way to avoid getting bashed in the shins. Greg swung his legs out and glared up at him.

"The fucking piece of shit car won't start."

"Want me to call a tow truck?"

"No, I want you to go turn on your car and then ram into this fucker until it resembles nothing so much as a large, crumpled tinfoil ball."

"I don't think my insurance covers that," Colin offered mildly.

"This whole town's falling apart," Greg mumbled. He stared at his hands.

Colin didn't know what to do. Finally he just said, "Come on. Let's get some food."

Greg trudged after him and got into the passenger seat, where he sat and glared balefully at the windshield. Colin started the car up again and drove to the exit, where he told Dave, the night security guard, about Greg's car. Dave shrugged and said he'd call Hollywood Tow; Greg could go pick the car up later. Then he raised the gate to let Colin out.

Colin aimed for Wilshire Boulevard, trying to remember how to get there. He hated driving in Los Angeles. He hated Los Angeles itself.

"Jesus," Greg finally said. "That was a tantrum,  
wasn't it?"

"A small one, but yeah."

"I have got to learn how to deal with shit better. Once you reach a certain age, having a tantrum just isn't fucking cute anymore. Where are we?"

"Damned if I know," Colin said, smiling.

"Lemme see." Greg leaned forward and squinted at the road. "Take a right up here and keep going. You weren't too far off. Are you going back to your hotel? I mean, afterwards?"

"What?"

"You know. Want to just eat and I'll go deal with my fucking car?"

"What?" Colin repeated. He felt confused, disconnected, and Greg wasn't helping.

Greg groaned. "I mean, you know, if you wanted to just grab something and go back to the hotel. I think I can brave the elements on my own. I mean, you've been really nice and everything, but this has got to be a pain in the ass and I bet you've got shit to do and whatever…"

"Um, you know you're babbling?"

"Oh. Shit. No."

"I really don't mind, Greg," Colin said, and hoped Greg would just leave it at that, because the last thing he wanted was to have to say, *I don't want to be by myself in that damned hotel room.*

"Really?"

"No." Colin saw the Fatburger sign up ahead.

"Oh." Greg looked at the dashboard. "I don't want to go home, Col."

Colin blinked at him. Greg turned and stared out the window, ending the conversation. Colin said just so he'd hear it, "You don't have to."

He could face the hotel room if someone else was with him. That way he could tell himself that it was just a guys' night out, rolling into the room after a long night, just looking for a place to watch television and sleep, instead of what it was, which was that he was forty-four years old, about three thousand miles away from home, and spending three nights in another hotel room before he could get a plane back to Toronto and go back to a rented apartment that felt the same way the hotel room did.

Colin gave the fast food sack to Greg and opened the hotel room door. The room was decorated in what seemed to be wall-to-wall brown, the fruit basket that he guessed was meant to serve as a Welcome-to-Los-Angeles present still on the bed. Colin put his cheeseburger on the table near the window.

"This is definitely not on the Zone," Colin said, looking at the food.

"Please. Food isn't supposed to be the size of a fist. Who in their right mind would eat a fistful of ice cream?" Greg poked the fruit basket. "Oh, look. Someone left an entire orchard on your bed. How sweet."

"Mmm." Colin bit into the cheeseburger. Grease and meat and pure carbohydrates. Delicious. Greg was tearing the paper that held his meal into little bits and dropping them into the wastebasket. "You okay?" Colin said.

"Yeah." Greg picked up a fry and popped it into his mouth. He swallowed and said, "You know my wife took off."

Colin looked up. "Oh, Jesus, Greg." Somehow he wasn't surprised at all; why else would Greg be hiding in his dressing room avoiding the outside world? He winced inwardly. He didn't want to say, "Are you okay?" or "I'm sorry," because he knew neither of those would work. "How long ago?" he said, as gently as he could.

"Christ, I don't know. Two weeks or something. Just ended." Greg flicked a stray pickle off his burger. "I guess that makes it real or something now, if you say it out loud."

"Yeah?" Colin got up and went to sit on the bed next to Greg. Half of him wanted to say, "Deb left too, you know," and the other half wanted to keep quiet, to not try to take over. He patted Greg's shoulder and said, the words awkward and reluctant in his throat, "Did anything…I mean, do you…Did something…" He wished he were better at this.

"Nothing happened. I mean, nothing like…Everything just wound down, you know? Like, I'm on the road, and maybe she's got her thing going or maybe she's coming with me, and after a while, maybe that gets to be just too fucking much, you know? Maybe there's a few too many times I didn't say things right, and maybe there's a few too many things that we don't have in common anymore, and you know. Maybe, maybe, maybe." Greg shrugged. "I don't know what I'm talking about."

Colin didn't say anything. He knew what Greg was talking about so well he could have recited it, word for word. "Have you talked to her?"

"Kind of. It's still pretty raw. She's upset and I'm, well, you know."

"Deb and I try to keep it simple. Where we are, things like that."

Greg's eyebrows came together. He sucked his breath in, a short surprised sound. "*Fuck,* Colin. Like I don't feel like enough of an asshole already. What happened? How are you?"

Colin winced. "I, um, I didn't mean to say that…" *Stupid. Selfish, stupid, stupid.*

"No, it's all right. I can wallow any time I fuckin' want to." Now Greg was patting his shoulder, softly, tentatively, like he expected to be told to stop. "You didn't tell anyone?"

Colin shook his head.

"How's Luke doing?"

"About as well as you could expect. Deb feels guilty. About everything."

"So she was the one who…"

"Yeah."

"So was Jennifer. I was ready to keep pretending everything was fine."

"Does Jennifer…? Every time I talk to Deb, you know, she's sort of thinking, *I failed,* you know? Like it says something about her. Does Jennifer…?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess she does."

"It doesn't *say* anything, Greg," Colin said. "About anyone. All it says is that something is broken and you can't fix it. That's all." When he said it out loud, he didn't feel as if he'd discovered a huge cathartic truth, but he felt something ease just a little at the back of his head. *Something was broken. We couldn't fix it. That's all.*

"I guess." Greg wasn't convinced. Colin had a vague memory of himself, three days after moving out, stomping around the rented apartment, when the only coherent thought he could have was *Why?* but any attempt to examine it just hurt too much to do.

"It takes a while," Colin said. "You deal with it. Like everything else."

"I guess," Greg repeated. "I just can't go back to the house, you know? It's just, like, full of *stuff.*" Colin looked at him quietly. Greg wrapped up the still mostly-untouched burger and put it aside. He took off his glasses. "I mean, it's a house, houses have stuff in them. I know that. But it's our stuff. Stuff we bought and stuff she gave me or I gave her. And it's not ours anymore. There isn't an 'ours' anymore." He yanked at his shirt cuffs in a sudden quick movement, looking at the floor.

Colin put an arm around his shoulders. There really wasn't anything he could say, nothing that would make it all better. Greg started to say something, but it died off into a small hurt noise. His shoulders were knotted together. Colin pulled him into a tight embrace, stroking his back, trying to get him to relax enough to speak or even scream if he needed to. He heard the soft clicking thump of Greg's glasses as they hit the floor.

He felt the warmth of Greg's breath against his shoulder, a long, shaky exhalation. He said softly, "It's okay, Greg," and the knot in Greg's back began to ease. He pulled out of Colin's arms. His eyes were small and weak without the glasses, unnaturally bright. He put his hands on Colin's shoulders and pulled him close and suddenly his mouth was on Colin's.

He hadn't expected this. He'd kissed Greg before, but it had been on stage, for a joke, and this wasn't on stage, and he wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a joke or not, oh God, oh God, oh God…

What was most surprising was that he wasn't pushing Greg away.

Greg's hands had dropped to around Colin's waist; his forearms rested on top of Colin's thighs. The touch of his mouth was gentle, moth-wings fluttering against his lips. There was something dream-like about it, and Colin knew that if he made the slightest movement, Greg would let go and pull away. But he didn't. He sat very still. It was tentative, strange contact, but it was contact. More than he'd had in weeks.

Greg seemed to shake himself out of it suddenly. There was a two-second pause where he stiffened, his tongue still in Colin's mouth.

"Jesus!" Greg jumped off of the bed as if it were on fire. His face had gone gray. "I'm so sorry, Col. I didn't know I was gonna do that. Honestly. I didn't…Jesus fucking *Christ.*" He grabbed the hair at his temples; he looked ready to bolt from the room.

"Greg," Colin said mildly. He hadn't moved. "Greg, calm down."

Greg stared at him blankly, face a mask of terror.

"You dropped your glasses." Colin said.

"What?"

"Your glasses. They're on the floor. Are they okay?"

Greg squinted at the floor and took his glasses. His breathing evened a little.

"Not broken?" Colin said.

"No." Greg rubbed at his forehead. "I'm sorry, Colin. I've never fucking done something like that before. I don't know what happened."

"Oh. Well," Colin said.

"Um, Col? Why am I the only one freaking out here?"

"I don't know," Colin said, and meant it. "I mean, it was a surprise."

"I guess."

"I guess it wasn't that bad." He shrugged. "Your breath was okay."

Greg looked at him, looked at his hands, and back again. "Well, small mercies." He began to laugh.

Colin joined him. They stared at each other, snickering wildly, until Greg flung himself back on the bed.

"I gotta tell you, Col, I've had better compliments on my technique than that. 'Your breath was okay.' Oh, man."

"Well, you know, I didn't have time to itemize everything about it."

"I guess." Greg pushed his glasses up and rubbed at his eyes with his index fingers. "Jesus. Tongue and everything. Damn."

"I know. Give me a little warning next time, okay?"

"I'll do my best. Colin?" Greg's voice was suddenly serious.

"Yeah?"

"We're still buddies, right? I mean, you're still going to respect me in the morning and whatever?"

"Yeah," Colin said. He rubbed Greg's shoulder. "Always."

Greg cocked his head at him, smiling shyly. "Okay. Good. Just checking."

"You're not leaving, are you?" Colin said.

"Not unless you want me to."

"I don't want to be alone, Greg."

"I can stay."

They slept on top of the bed together. Colin woke up a few times to find Greg's arm flung over his stomach, and each time he drifted back to sleep feeling safe and connected.

Greg woke him up in the morning by getting off the bed. Colin rubbed sleep out of his eyes and said thickly, "You heading out?"

"Yeah." Greg dragged his fingers through his hair. "I'm gonna go get my stupid fucking car out of hock, and then I'm going home to eat about five hundred waffles and go back to bed."

"Sounds good."

"You're leaving soon, right?"

"Tomorrow."

"I'll see you when you get back in town. Or, you know, if you want to talk to someone or whatever, you can call."

"You can do that too."

"Yeah." Greg bent over the bed to give him an awkward hug. "Take care, okay?"

"You too."

The hotel room door clicked shut after Greg. Colin raised his head to look at the clock. It was eight am.

In eight hours he would get on the phone to talk to his son. In twenty four hours he would get on a plane to head back home. The sun shone in through the window, and he turned to face it, keeping his eyes open and feeling the warmth on his face.


End file.
